Pages tagged "All reports"

The 2014 midterm elections are upon us. How will women candidates fair? Using Monopoly Politics 2014 projections, we find that the U.S. House will not move much closer to gender parity in 2014. If this election is indicative of a trend (and it seems to be), Representation 2020 reforms offer a faster path to gender parity.

In July, the city of Santa Barbara became the most recent in a string of California cities being sued under the California Voting Rights Act for diluting the votes of their Latino population. By electing candidates at-large with fair voting, Santa Barbara could remedy any alleged vote dilution in a race neutral way, avoid the pitfalls of redistricting, and encourage the equitable election of women.

Though spared the controversies of congressional redistricting, winner-take-all rules still plague the seven at-large states (Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming). Nowhere are the shortcomings of our voting system more acute than in at-large winner-take-all races, where one individual is - rather astonishingly - responsible for representing the political and demographic diversity of an entire state. Read our latest critique of winner-take-all elections and our analysis of congressional elections in these at-large states.

“The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.” While the language of the 26th amendment is intended to serve young people well, it still leaves open a loophole in Constitutional law- while young people cannot be discriminated against based on their age, they can be denied the chance to vote, or have their ability to vote abridged, for reasons that can also undercut voting rights for older citizens.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine states filed a Lawsuit against Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the largest supplier of voting machines in the U.S., in response to the purchase, last year, of its biggest competitor, Premier Election Solutions.